Everything Matters!

A Novel

By: Ron Currie Jr.

Narrated by: Abby Craden, Hillary Huber, Mark Deakins, Lincoln Hoppe, Arthur Morey, Doug Wert

In infancy, Junior Thibodeaux is encoded with a prophesy: A comet will obliterate life on Earth in 36 years. Alone in this knowledge, he comes of age in rural Maine grappling with the question: Does anything I do matter?

While the voice that has accompanied him since conception appraises his choices, Junior's loved ones emerge with parallel stories - his anxious mother; his brother, a cocaine addict turned pro-baseball phenomenon; his exalted father, whose own mortality summons Junior's best and worst instincts; and Amy, the love of Junior's life and a North Star to his journey through romance and heartbreak, drug-addled despair, and superheroic feats that could save humanity. While our recognizable world is transformed into a bizarre nation at endgame, where government agents conspire in subterranean bunkers, preparing citizens for emigration from a doomed planet, Junior's final triumph confounds all expectation, building to an astonishing and deeply moving resolution.

Ron Currie, Jr., gets to the heart of character, and the voices who narrate this uniquely American tour de force leave an indelible, exhilarating impression.

©2009 Ron Currie (P)2009 Penguin

Critic reviews

"Mr. Currie is a startlingly talented writer whose book will pay no heed to ordinary narrative conventions.... He survives the inevitable, apt comparisons to Kurt Vonnegut and writes in a tenderly mordant voice of his own.... Throughout the story there is the sheer delight of Mr. Currie's fresh, joltingly funny imagery.... Above all Everything Matters! radiates writerly confidence. The excitement that drives the reader from page to page is not about the characters. It's about seeing what Mr. Currie will try next." (Janet Maslin, New York Times)

"Currie's novel is extraordinary, a lively narrative that slaloms from the exhilerating to the numinous to the achingly sad, all tied together by the author's sharp, funny voice." (NPR)

"Superb.... Some scenes make you laugh out loud. There are passages of beauty and wicked turns of phrase...marvelously, Currie suffuses his unhappy and disparate characters with salvation." (The Los Angeles Times)

my favorite book

I love this book so much. very good read. everything matters. a beautiful book and story

Everything Is A Plot Twist!

If, like me, you were drawn to "Everything Matters" by the description of the novel as a story of a man who knows when the world will end, you may be disappointed by the initial few hours of the book. The obtuse style of the novel takes a while to get used to, and, for me, never completely gels, but it eventually reveals a family drama with world destruction as distant backstory. The biggest problem I had with "Matters" is its relentless need to prove itself, piling on quirk after quirk, plot twist after plot twist until, frankly, I just didn't care anymore. That's not life, that's melodrama. Currie gains some redemption with a heartfelt third act, but it's too little, too late for this reader to recommend the book without reservations. The voice cast, for the most part, is excellent.

good idea, imperfect execution

One thing I'll say about Everything Matters is that its plot messed with my expectations. Not that I had a lot of expectations about a novel that opened with disembodied voices telling a developing fetus that the world would end in 36 years, but Currie's story of a typical American life with a few very untypical things about it dodges easy categorization. It's neither magic realism, nor science fiction, nor a supernatural tale, but more of an earnest existential drama about the choices people make with their lives.

That said, I thought Everything Matters did a flawed job of living up to its own ambition. At times, it sucked me in with its soulful character studies, but other times, it felt like a string of self-indulgent, slightly unbelievable vignettes of the sort a gifted but amateur writer might bring to a workshop. Currie clearly wants readers to respond emotionally to his story, and pummels us with one piece of drama after another. On a page-by-page level, it's involving and sometimes sadly moving, but as a whole, the story seemed a bit unreal and the characters' motives somewhat arbitrary. As I progressed, I wondered if Currie had really known where he was going with his book, or was just fumbling around for plot ideas and trying to keep the reader's sense of incredulity from catching up. Now that I've finished it, I can't totally disown this impression.

But, I will say that Everything Matters at least tries for something different, even if it falls a little short in execution. Currie asks some serious questions and doesn't wrap everything up neatly -- in fact, the bleak but beautiful ending wasn't the one I would have seen coming at the beginning. You may find yourself, when all is said and done, pondering the choice the main character makes about three quarters of the way through the book, wondering what other paths he (or the author) might have taken. I'll give this book a thumbs up for that, even if it won't make any of my top ten lists.

Better than I expected

The story was good, but had parts I did not like mainly about the characters, but that might just be me. All in all I did like he book and it was entertaining.

Good Premise - Weak Ending

The first half of the book was addictive. Filled with human stories told through a fantastical background it promised a plot that would complete multiple arcs. Instead, the book fizzled out toward the last quarter right after the climax leaving me unfulfilled at the end.

Narration was amazing and the production had the perfect compression and equalization.

Moving and engrossing

I happened to listen to this book whenever I needed a break (to cool off my smoking brain) from Michio Kaku's Parallel Worlds. Coincidence? You be the judge ;>) I found this book engrossing. At times I wondered if I was listening to the inside story of a schizophrenic's illness, at other times I wondered if the whole thing was just one big metaphor, and at still other times the impending end of the world faded to the background and I just witnessed the lives of the characters. For anyone who likes to ponder the imponderable, this book is wonderfully entertaining and thought-provoking. (I wish the title did not have the exclamation mark in it. It cheapens the weight of the story and the ideas. I don't know why that matters, except that everything does...)

A Treasure I Needed to Read

Within the first four minutes I knew this was a book I wanted to listen to. The intrigue associated with the main premise captured my attention at the start and held it for 13 hours. I just had to know what was going to happen. Everything Matters is an exploration of the human condition set against the most dire circumstances imaginable. It's raw like Catcher in the Rye is raw, but the Sci Fi angle provides an extra twist that expands it way beyond the limited realm of Holden Caulfield. By the end of the book, you love every single character as they struggle against their dysfunctional lives and come to realize, as does the reader, that everything really does matter! This is not a new story, but the way it is told is especially compelling. Everything Matters is a literary piece of art that should have much higher reviews. Don't hesitate to spend a credit on this one!

could not finish it - stopped caring...

Too long, too improbable, too boring, I stopped caring about the characters and simply could not finish it. Waste of time.

Excellent!

I highly recommend Everything Matters! The narration is excellent, and the story itself is well-written and unique. Based on this enjoyable listening experience, I am going to seek out the other book by this author.

Loved this story!

There are times I simply didn't like Junior. Yet his story, all he gains though the experience of his life, is so heartbreaking and brave.